AAHA Meeting To Mark 75 Years

The 75th annual AAHA conference will be held in Tampa, Florida on a new date.

January 15, 2008

The American Animal Hospital Assn.’s 75th anniversary conference[1] will be held in Tampa, Fla., March 27-30, marking a change in its yearly conference schedule.

Based on surveys, AAHA found that attendees didn’t want to spend too much time away from their practice and wanted to be home in time to get back to work on Monday. To help meet these needs, AAHA’s conferences will now run Thursday through Sunday every year.

More than 300 hours of continuing education covering scientific, management, technician and team topics will be offered.

Other topics will include preventive medicine and disease screening of purebreds; improving critical care outcomes with nutrition; economics and new horizons of pain management; patient and owner management considerations for pets with chronic illnesses; preparing for practice ownership; greening your practice; and electronic health records.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition Inc. of Topeka, Kan., is sponsoring “The Puzzling Patient: What to Do When the Pieces Don’t Fit.” The symposium includes “The Feline Perspective—Nothing Is as Easy as It Looks”; “The Largest Endocrine Organ: I Can Resist Anything but Temptation”; “Mature Mysteries: Old Age Ain’t No Place for Sissies”; and “The Schnauzer Hour: If Confusion is the First Step to Knowledge, I Must Be a Genius.”

“New Solutions to Everyday Challenges” will be sponsored by Pfizer Animal Health of New York. The symposium includes managing the chronic vomiting dog; ”Old, Fat, Crunchy Dogs: How to Manage Overweight Dogs with Osteoarthritis”; “The Art of Antimicrobial Selection: New Therapeutic Strategies”; and “Pain Relief in the Intensive Care Patient.”

Several awards will be presented throughout the conference. These include AAHA Practitioner of the Year, Hill’s Animal Welfare and Humane Ethics Award, AAHA Leadership Award sponsored by Pfizer Animal Health, Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Award and the Nestle Purina Petcare Award.

There will also be an accredited practice breakfast for those AAHA-accredited practices celebrating their 25- and 50-year anniversaries.